Afghanistan and Pakistan

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

There have been some fascinating contributions to the debate, not least the eloquent and expert contribution by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind).

I start by doing what many others have done in the Chamber many times, but is still worth doing—paying tribute to our armed forces and, in particular, to those who have lost their lives. I would like to make special mention of Colour Serjeant Kevin Fortuna, who went to school in my constituency and who lost his life not that long ago in Afghanistan. I do not think that he died in vain. The presence of Colour Serjeant Fortuna and many others helps to achieve the central aim of our presence in Afghanistan, which is to protect the security of this country, but has also increased the chances of Afghanistan being a more stable and peaceful country at some stage in the future. If it is not a perfect democracy, that was never one of the core aims of our intervention.

That is why I am slightly puzzled by some elements of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report. It makes a couple of highly controversial claims. It states that the core justification of the UK presence, which was the threat posed to national security by al-Qaeda in particular, was removed some time ago, but somewhat contradictorily, it suggests that the security situation is still precarious. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington made exactly the right answer to that, which was that even if that was true, and even if al-Qaeda has been massively damaged in its capacity to regain control of Afghanistan, we still have to find a way of extricating ourselves from the position we are in now in a way that maximises the Afghan Government and society’s chances of stability and peace. We cannot simply walk out.

The report also suggests that there were wider secondary aims that have now proved unachievable, one of which was the defeat of the Taliban. Again, I am not sure that that was ever one of the core aims. The idea was to increase the capacity of the Afghan national security forces to contain and manage the security situation themselves. That is still an important aim as we proceed through withdrawal.

Rather paradoxically, the report goes on to query the 2015 deadline for withdrawal, but accepts that it has concentrated minds. That is an important function of deadlines, but in some ways the debate has moved on, especially after the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier today of further troop reductions. Quite a few hon. Members have pointed out the hard-headed realism that is needed, and the fact that we are not in a leadership position in Afghanistan—a role that effectively falls to the Americans, as we have only one 10th the number of forces that they have there. That leadership will inevitably pass at some stage to the Afghan Government and the people themselves. Therefore, the troop reductions that the Prime Minister announced today are not only right but inevitable.

Political reconciliation ought to be part of the process that we encourage as the withdrawal takes place, which is something that liberals and democrats might find difficult to accept. Would we have wanted political reconciliation with our enemies in previous wars? Has political reconciliation worked everywhere else it has been tried—in Zimbabwe, for example? If we support democracy, should we not defend it at all costs and recognise that there are non-Pashtun political leaders in Afghanistan who really do not want reconciliation with the Taliban at this stage?

I think that there is a role for political reconciliation if some of the points made in the report and elsewhere are acknowledged, including the importance of recognising the regional context and finding a solution that takes into account not only Pakistan and Iran, but India and Russia, and approaches the region on a wider scale. It should also encourage a political solution that recognises the complexity and diversity of Afghan society, its highly tribal structure and perhaps the need for less control from Kabul and a more decentralised approach. In that situation, such an approach to political reconciliation might be, as the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) described it, distasteful but worthwhile. It might not be successful, but in a regional context and with an attention to complexity and diversity, it might become more likely.

The UK’s role must be to support development, and preferably not just in militarily volatile areas, to support the institutions of government and society—such support ought to be, if anything, increasing—and to do whatever we can to embed universal human rights in Afghan politics and society, especially the rights of women, while accepting that ultimately that will not be our job, and that those responsibilities will have to pass to the Afghans themselves.

We have to encourage the same thing in the border areas of Pakistan. I commend to the Minister an extraordinary report that recently landed on my desk, produced by an organisation called the Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme, which I am happy to say is funded by the British high commission. That extremely revealing report explores in great detail opinions in the federally administered frontier tribal areas of Pakistan. It shows that there is, unfortunately, a high degree of hostility to British and American policy, but far from universal support for extremist or Salafist militancy. Of the respondents, 42% identified terrorist attacks as the main threat to life, 57% said suicide bombing was never justified, and there was support for military operations by the Pakistani army. The BBC World Service was rated highly as a source of information, and the same kind of attention was given to issues such as education and schools as we would expect to find among people all over the world.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Martin Horwood]

I cannot, because of the time and because I am drawing my remarks to a close.

We must have a realistic approach, but in some senses a more optimistic one, that accepts that the whole debate on Afghanistan is moving into a different phase, but in which we are still determined to support the stability and peace of Afghan society.